The deadlock at the Diamond Harbour dock could not be broken by the emergency meeting on Friday as the rival unions refused to blink.

Unloading of cargo ships at the dock has come to a halt for the past three weeks with a Trinamul Congress-backed union challenging the monopoly of a Citu-backed group that supplies labourers.

No ship arrived at the Diamond Harbour dock on Friday. Clearing agents said it proved that word of the deadlock had flowed far up the Hooghly.

Friday saw a trickle of cargo from MV Konkar Theo — which had docked on Thursday — to a few mechanised boats, making the clearing agents fret and fume.

“The unloading is so slow and uncertain that we will end up paying enormous demurrage — Rs 25 lakh for each day’s delay — to the shipping company,” Sharad Varma, the managing director of B. Ghosh and Company.

At Friday’s meeting in Diamond Harbour sub-divisional officer Siddhartha Shankar Chakraborty’s office, the Citu-backed Diamond Harbour Sub-Division Shipping Loading Unloading Workers’ Union insisted that labourers for the unloading would be supplied by them.

The Trinamul Congress-backed Calcutta-Diamond Harbour Port Workers’ Union demanded that half of the labourers be supplied by them.

“Both the unions stuck to their positions and no solution emerged,” said Chakraborty.

Sanghamitra Ghosh, the district magistrate of South 24-Parganas, said she would get the report from the sub-divisional officer and then take steps to end the impasse at the Diamond Harbour dock.